page_title: Collybia cookei
section_title: Description
hierarchical_section_title: Collybia cookei / Description
caption_attribution_description: Collybia cookei from Commanster, Belgian High Ardennes .
context_page_description: Collybia cookei is a species of fungus in the family Tricholomataceae, and one of three species in the genus Collybia. It is known from Europe, Asia, and North America. The fungus produces fruit bodies that usually grow on the decomposing remains of other mushrooms, like Meripilus giganteus, Inonotus hispidus, or species of Russula; occasionally fruit bodies are found on rich humus or well-decayed wood. The fungus produces small white mushrooms with caps up to 9 mm in diameter, supported by thin stems that originate from a yellowish-brown sclerotium. The mushroom is difficult to distinguish from the other two species of Collybia unless an effort is made to examine the sclerotia, which is usually buried in the substrate. The edibility of the mushroom has not been determined.
context_section_description: The caps of young mushrooms are roughly spherical, but soon become convex to flattened in maturity, and reach diameters of 2–9 mm (0.08–0.35 in). The cap margin is rolled or curled inward when young, but straightens out as it matures. The cap color is white to cream. The gills are broadly adnate to slightly decurrent, with a color similar to the cap; their spacing is close to subdistant. The whitish stem is equal in width throughout, usually not straight but with curves, and 2–5 cm (0.8–2.0 in) long by 0.3–1.0 mm (0.01–0.04 in) thick. The upper region of the stem surface can be covered with what appears to be a white powder, and there are thin hairs near the base. The stems originate from a yellowish-brown sclerotium that is up to 6 mm (0.24 in) long. The sclerotium ranges in shape from roughly spherical to almond-shaped to irregular, and its surface is often wrinkled and pitted. The mushroom has no distinctive odor or taste, and its edibility is unknown.
  In deposit, the spore color is white. The spores are smooth, ellipsoidal to tear-shaped, hyaline (translucent), not amyloid, and measure 3.9–5.2 by 2.6–3.3 μm. The basidia (spore-bearing cells in the hymenium) are four-spored and hyaline, with dimensions of 16–20 by 4–5 μm. They have clamps at their bases. There are no cystidia on either the edges (cheilocystidia) or faces (pleurocystidia) of the gills. The arrangement of the hyphae in the hymenophoral tissue varies from regular to interwoven. The cap cuticle is a cutis (a type of tissue where the hyphae are arranged more or less parallel to the surface), formed by hyphae with septa, roughly 4–9 μm in diameter. Clamp connections are present in the hyphae. The sclerotium is made of hyphae that have yellow pigment in their walls that appear in cross-section to be pseudoparenchymatous (compactly interwoven short-celled hyphae that resemble parenchyma of higher plants), and measure 5–10 μm in diameter.
caption: The gills attachment to the stem is adnate, and their spacing is close to subdistant.
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